"Besides taking out four Eritrean MiG-29s (plus one written off due to damage recieved from a AAM) Ethiopian Su-27s also carried out many strike missions against the Eritrean ground forces.

Interesting to note that all MiG-29s were shot down in close-quarters turning dogfights. All kills were by means of the R-73. R-27s fired by both MiGs and Su-s on various occassions failed to find their mark.

One uneventful incident occured when two Su-27s were intercepted over Eritrean airspace by four MiGs. The lead Su-27 was targeted by the MiGs which fired three R-27s head-on. The Lead evaded the missiles and then proceeded to engage all four MiGs by firing four R-27s in quick succession. The missiles missed and the MiGs left in a hurry.

So in that engagement, a total of 7 R-27's were fired and... none found their mark.

LESSONS LEARNED?

R-27's miss - a lot. R-73's fare much better, albeit we don't know how many were fired to get 5 kills. End of the day the SU-27 looked pretty dominant, although I'm sure pilot skill was the determining factor. So what to make of the R-27? Turkey, or did they suffer from poor maintenance/pilot employment? As it stands, the R-27 sounds like it has the reliability of early Sparrow missiles over Vietnam. Even worse, considering there have been zero reported kills.

If I'm the Russians, I can see now why they prioritize the dogfight so much - they have no BVR kills that I can see. We see cool videos of Mig-31's shooting R-33's and downing targets many kilometers away, but is that legit? And we have brochure weapons with 400km ranges, hypersonic weapons etc..

Deep down, I think they know their BVR stuff is junk, or at least highly suspect. We bet big on stealth, sensors and BVR. They bet big on no stealth, marginal sensors and WVR maneuverability. Methinks the Israeli's and her F-35's will show the world how the US was right, swiftly dispatching with Iranian F-14's who will likely have no idea what hit them. Sort of like how their F-14's dominated in the Iran-Iraq war during the 1980's...

And I have a feeling if there is a dogfight, the 9x is going to have the last word - regardless of platform.

Thats an under statement, In that war, there was an estimated 24 launches of the R-27 resulting in just 1 successful hit. Thats a Pk of 4%

However this is largely blamed on poor training and maintenance, as R-27s had more success in other places with 1 Yemani R-27T alegedly hitting a Saudi F-15

mixelflick wrote:We bet big on stealth, sensors and BVR. They bet big on no stealth, marginal sensors and WVR maneuverability.

American Fighters are better for BVR and Russian fighters are better for WVR is exactly what Sukhoi fans spew all the time. Balance only happens in video games. In the real world, you strive for superiority in all aspects and not leave any advantage for your opponent.

case and point, there is no better WVR aircraft than an F-22, not by a wide margin. I even consider the F-35 better than the Su-30 in a knife fight. The F-16 is better than the Mig-29 in the phone booth so is the F/A-18.

zero-one wrote:American Fighters are better for BVR and Russian fighters are better for WVR is exactly what Sukhoi fans spew all the time. Balance only happens in video games. In the real world, you strive for superiority in all aspects and not leave any advantage for your opponent

Mig-31 is very good BVR, better than F-14, F-15, F-16, F-18

zero-one wrote:case and point, there is no better WVR aircraft than an F-22, not by a wide margin

zero-one wrote:American Fighters are better for BVR and Russian fighters are better for WVR is exactly what Sukhoi fans spew all the time. Balance only happens in video games. In the real world, you strive for superiority in all aspects and not leave any advantage for your opponent

Mig-31 is very good BVR, better than F-14, F-15, F-16, F-18

zero-one wrote:case and point, there is no better WVR aircraft than an F-22, not by a wide margin

In early 90s the MiG-31 BVR on paper was probably better than the teen fighters. It had PESA while all US fighters had mechanically scanned radars, it even had data link. With upgraded AIM-120 and AESA the F-15 probably turned it around but MiG-31 is no slouch.

With izd.30 engines Su-57 WVR can probably match or exceed F-22's, though it's really down to the pilot. There's a lot of other problems with Su-57 though.

zero-one wrote:All those versions of the teen series in service have AESA...

and?

zero-one wrote:Doubt it, not with those engines. Did they resolve the cracks issue

What crack issue? and i don't think you should disregard the potential of an aircraft due to some of their current isue that can be solved , remember what the critic said about F-35 and where it is now?

knowan wrote:Until the MiG-31 received the Zaslon-M in the 2010s with the MiG-31BM, the MiG-31's radar actually wasn't that great; head-on detection range was just 200 km vs 19 m^2 RCS.

Only figures I've found for the F-14 is the AWG-9 having 207mm km detection range against 1 m^2 RCS, which works out to over twice the range of the Zaslon (and still better than Zaslon-M).

I didn't dig enough to find detection range data for F-15, F-16 and F-18 radar, but I expect the original Zaslon had better range than F-16 and F-18, but probably inferior to F-15.

There's more to radar performance than just detection range. Zaslon had an extremely advanced antenna design for the time; better than anything else in a fighter (although describing the Foxhound as a "fighter" might be a bit of a stretch) at the time. It was let down by the computers behind the radar, but it still had some key advantages.

The F-14's radar at the time, if I recall, could juggle more targets than Zaslon could, and at somewhat better range. However, Zaslon spent far, far less time re-adjusting the beam when it jumped from target to target, and it had none of the mechanical offset drift problems of the AWG-9, so when Zaslon was tracking a whole mess of targets the tracks would be more accurate. In principle the PESA could have better ECCM as well, although it may have been let down again by sub-par computer processors.

Interestingly R-27R1/T1 are also using single-mode rocket engine and ER1/ET1 are using dual-mode rockets.Yep, that means a boost-only motor.

The consensus I had read is that boost and sustain motors for AAMs do not work terribly well, although the technology might be more workable in larger missiles. Apparently the grain likes to flake and do other bad things, and the nozzle can only be optimized for one burn rate.

garrya wrote:Su-57 probably better

SU-57 looks like it has a high instantaneous turn rate, and it comes out of the gate with DIRCM. But I'm not sure that would save it against the Raptor's nutso bonkers sustained turn rate, especially at higher altitudes where I suspect the F119 gives better SEP thanks to its absurdly low BPR. But I'm interested to hear your take.

SU-57 looks like it has a high instantaneous turn rate, and it comes out of the gate with DIRCM. But I'm not sure that would save it against the Raptor's nutso bonkers sustained turn rate, especially at higher altitudes where I suspect the F119 gives better SEP thanks to its absurdly low BPR. But I'm interested to hear your take.

People don't seem to take on board the fact that there are only T-50s in existence to this day. There are no Su57s in RuAF service. The first Su57 is supposed to be built this year. The PAK-AF was supposed to enter service in the 1990s, but Sukhoi's T50 won the PAK FA competition in 2002 and began production in 2009, and still there's no engine for it!

Can you imagine if this had happened to the F-35?

It's the old lipstick-on-a-pig trick.

( ... and what was that weight-growth from YF-22 --> F-22A again? ...)

Well....thing is. With BVR, absolute max ranges isn't really as important as what we might think.

All BVR shots I've read and heard about happened below 20 NM. If someone has documentations on kills that were further then I'm open for correction.

I think properties like jam resistance, LPI radar modes, passive BVR detection, data linking to missiles, overall situational awareness, even high speed maneuverability is more important in a BVR fight. In those respects the F-15 would be best among all 4th gens and will be far superior to any Mig-31.

Question though, Paul Metz as well as many Raptor pilots have said that the F-22 is able to kill targets without them ever knowing they were being shot at in the first place. How is this possible? Doesn't the F-22 need to use its own radar for a targeting solution? I know it has LPI modes but that will only make it difficult to locate if I'm not mistaken. So how does the Raptor make a kill without the target ever knowing that its being targeted?

In WVR there is too little information on the Su-57 to make a conclusion. As it is now, the TVC system only deflects 15 degrees in the pitch axis. Planes turn by banking then pitching so its safe to assume that if TVC is needed the F-22 will have more pitch control available.

The Raptor is most definitely stealthier in the RF and IR spectrum as well even at WVR ranges. Maybe even visually, I read that the most difficult color to see in the sky are actually varying shades of gray which is why all US aircraft are painted gray. The Su-57s blue camo pattern just screams hey shoot me.

The fact that no one seems interested in the Su-57 not even Russia herself speaks volumes.